Perry, who launched her career with the crime novel “The Cater Street Hangman” in 1979, is best known for two popular series of detective novels set in the Victorian era — one following policeman Thomas Pitt and his well-born wife, Charlotte, the other featuring private detective William Monk and nurse Hester Latterly.

The English author has also written a mystery series set during World War I, several Christmas-themed novellas, two fantasy novels and a young adult series about time travel, as well as a handful of stand-alone books.

Perry had her own personal brush with crime as a teenager. In 1954, the 15-year-old, then known as Juliet Hulme, and her best friend, Pauline Parker, murdered Parker’s mother in New Zealand; the incident inspired the 1994 movie “Heavenly Creatures.”